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Published: June 16th 2017
Cemetery at the Caste Ruins
The castle ruins of Les Baux were huge. Really old cemetery that that was very quiet and peaceful. They had some fairly current graves there.Geo: 43.7439, 4.79528
Yesterday was pretty tame, but today was a little stressful at times.
As we were leaving our base town of St Remy this morning, we noticed an unusual amount of traffic. Oops, we forgot it was Market Day in St Remy. We considered turning around and going back, but we were all ready for our day's adventures so we continued on and hoped to get back to St Remy in time to see some of Market Day.
We set off for Les Baux, which is a short 20 minute drive from our base town. Easy drive, too, except as we were leaving St Remy we hit a brief construction zone where the road was down to one lane. There was a car in front of me going through so I hurried up to follow him through. We had a yellow signal light so I figured I could proceed with caution. After the guy in front of me made it through, a car immediately started coming toward us. It was only one lane and I was already started, so we were playing chicken. Gary would be so proud of me – I stuck it out and he had to swing behind
Dot in front of the Siege Engine
Sort of a mini trebuchet No, she isn't on her phone. She is listening to the audio guide. a construction truck to get out of the way. I didn't look at him, but Dot said he was yelling at us. Tourists! Basically, I don't have the skill to back up this car down a tiny little lane.
We proceeded to Les Baux and found the perfect parking lot. Nice policeman monitoring the lot and explained that we pay now at the kiosk. 5 euro for the day. Easy, right? The kiosk didn't take any paper money only coins. We only had 2 euro in coins. But the kiosk took credit cards. Awesome. I tried my normal credit card and entered my pin. It OKd my PIN but denied my credit card. So I tried my AMEX – declined. Dot tried her debit card, Declined. Dot tried her credit card, it said use swipe. We didn't see a separate swipe, so I told her to put it in the other way. OOPS. It got stuck! The nice policeman came over twice to check on us. He couldn't get the card out either. He radioed for help. Another guy comes driving up and has a handy pair of pliers to pull the card out with. YAY! We still can't pay for
Chris in front of the big trebuchet
This is the big one where they actually did a demonstration. it was pretty cool. I have video but can't upload with this wifi. parking. We're looking for change. In the meantime the poor guy waiting behind us uses his credit card without any incident. He offers us his parking ticket. What a nice guy. We give him 5 euro and are on our way. We see him periodically around the castle – he works for Xerox.
So on to the tourist stuff. We walk quickly through the medieval town (we'll shop later) and climb up toward the castle ruins. Steep climb but there is a huge castle ruin on top of the cliff, with an audio guide and lots of English signs- yay. The castle was basically carved out of and on top of rock 650 feet above the valley below. A lot of the original walls are still standing. They had some "demonstrations" during the day. We saw a trebuchet (catapault) actually fire which was pretty cool. Of course the actors spoke totally in French and did cute little skits, but it was still fun even if we didn't understand what they were saying. It was like being in Disneyland, but the ruins are real. They also had a little sword fight and demonstrated how the crossbows worked. Not quite as cool as
Dovecoat
this was cool looking. This is where they kept all the pigeons at the castle. Some were for eating, but some were for carrying messages. The little holes are hollowed out limestones. There were still some birds flying around up there today. I guess it makes good nests. Better than the bats we use to have at my house. Darryl (Walking Dead), but the concept is the same. You could also shoot the crossbows at the firing range, but there were a lot of kids there that wanted to shoot, so I passed. Would have been fun.
We toured the ruins on our own and it was pretty interesting. When we were done we strolled through the shops in the medieval town that supported the castle. One of the tiny shops had Pepsi. First I had seen since our arrival in France. This is definitely a Coke country. Bought 3 cans. Would have bought more but I didn't want to carry them up and down all the hills.
We grabbed a quick lunch at a bakery and a cookie store. Just can't resist.
Returned to St Remy to check out Market Day. Most of the produce and food vendors were gone, but the jewelry, clothes, misc vendors were still going strong.
We shopped around then headed back out for a scenic drive. Came back and decided to finish the site-seeing around our base town of St Remy. There are some Roman ruins and an archeological site where they have dug up an entire town – Glanum. It was pretty cool, but I
One of the "actors"
Demonstrating the Crossbow. All in French, but they were funny and entertaining. have a hard time visualizing things from ruins.
Tomorrow is our last day in Provence. Friday is a travel day when we leave for Paris, then fly home Saturday morning. We are trying to decide what to do tomorrow. We were going to go to Orange, but it is a huge market day there, with little parking and the weather is going to be crappy. We are considering a Spa day, since our hotel has a nice spa. We will see what tomorrow brings.
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Mary
non-member comment
Yes! I've been here too. I actually stayed in Les Baux as my base town when I was in Provence. Loved it!